"The European Union acted on Tuesday to reinvigorate the membership
ambitions of six Balkan states and reclaim the region as its own amid
growing Russian and Chinese influence, setting 2025 as a goal for Serbia
and Montenegro to join.
Seeking to breathe fresh life into the EU with Britain set
to leave, the European Commission laid out a strategy to bring Western
Balkan nations into the fold if they achieve required reforms, marking a
change after years of fading interest.
“The door is
open ... There is a clear path for the Western Balkans to finally join
the European Union,” EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said of
Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia as she
presented the plan at the European Parliament in Strasbourg.
“The
future of the Union is not bound to be at 27,” she said, referring to
the current membership level of the bloc, discounting Britain, which is
due to leave in 2019.
Serbia’s Prime Minister Ana
Brnabic said it was a call to “work every day from now ... to become
part of the European family of nations”.
Johannes Hahn,
the EU’s enlargement commissioner, earlier urged the bloc not to repeat
past mistakes, alluding to what many believe was the rushed accession of
Romania and Bulgaria in 2007 and the poorly managed migration of
eastern European workers to Britain that turned many Britons against the
EU.
Brussels has been growing worried about Russia’s
assertiveness on its borders since Moscow’s annexation of Ukraine’s
Crimea region in 2014 - concerns exacerbated in the Balkans after
Montenegro accused Russia of supporting a failed coup in 2016.
Meanwhile,
Chinese investment in the region, though welcomed by governments, is
seen as undermining EU standards because it does not come with the same
stringent requirements as EU aid.
EU “LIP SERVICE”?
Underlining
the renewed enthusiasm for the Balkans, top EU officials said there was
no alternative but for the countries to join the European Union.
Support for EU membership ranges from roughly 75 percent in Kosovo to 52
percent in Serbia.
The EU’s Balkan strategy aims to
show that membership is certain if the region’s states meet EU demands
including establishing independent courts, a free press and breaking up
crime rings that have badly weakened governments.
Jasmin
Mujanovic, a U.S.-based political analyst, warned that the EU strategy
would run into the same problems if there was not a new plan to help
reform the Western Balkans.
“There’s a lot of lip
service to addressing what are the structural problems in the region,
which is corruption, clientilism and entrenched illiberal elites. But
it’s unclear to me as to what exactly they propose to do about this.”
Integration
means increasing access to EU funds and is designed to foster reforms
to lure investors, boost growth and encourage stability in a region
still grappling with the legacy of Yugoslavia’s socialist planned
economy.
Albania and Montenegro are already members of
the U.S-led NATO alliance while Macedonia is likely to be offered NATO
membership, often seen as a springboard to EU membership, if it can
overcome a dispute over its name with Greece.
EU leaders will embrace the 2025 timeline at a special Western Balkans summit in May in Sofia, the Commission said.
Serbia
and Montenegro are the most advanced in the accession process but Hahn
said that could easily change if Serbia did not recognize the
independence of Kosovo, its former province.
Belgrade’s
ally Russia and five EU states have also refused to recognize Kosovo,
including Spain, which is trying to contain its own separatists in
Catalonia.
Kosovo’s Integration Minister, Dhurata Hoxha,
said it was important that the European Commission stressed Kosovo’s
status as an independent country.
“The fact that the EU
treats Kosovo’s accession to EU as separate from Serbia for me is the
recognition of our independence despite that some of the EU members
states do not recognize us,” Hoxha said."
No comments:
Post a Comment